Facebook Praised by Greenpeace Despite Expanding Carbon Footprint

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Facebook Praised by Greenpeace Despite Expanding Carbon Footprint

Photo: Pete Erickson/Wired

Facebook's data centers will increase their dependence on dirty energy over the next year. But Greenpeace is still pleased with the company's progress.

On Wednesday, Facebook published a report detailing its energy use and carbon emissions in 2011. The good news is that, according to the company, each individual user's carbon footprint is roughly equivalent to a medium latte. But the company's data centers are expanding, so its dependance on non-renewable energy will likely get worse before it gets better.

The social networking giant expects its forthcoming hydro-powered data center in Lulea, Sweden to improve its mix of renewable and non-renewable energy use, but the rapid expansion of its data centers in Prineville, Oregon and Forest City, North Carolina will increase the amount of non-renewable energy the company uses.

According to Facebook's report, the company's data centers were 23 percent powered by clean energy in 2011. But its goal is to keep this figure below 25 percent by 2015, highlighting the difficulty of improving this mix as its needs grow. According to Facebook's report, the company plans to continue pressuring local utilities to provide more clean energy sources.

Greenpeace – the well-known environment activist – praised Facebook's progress and transparency, while taking a side swipe some of the other giants of the web. "Unfortunately, the transparency Facebook exhibited today is still rare among companies who are racing to build our online world, where some of the largest companies behind the cloud, such as Amazon, still refuse to disclose any information about their energy use and mix," Greenpeace International Senior IT Analyst Gary Cook said in a statement.

Facebook started taking heat from Greenpeace back in February 2010, when the organization launched a campaign demanding that Facebook commit to dropping coal. Since then, Facebook has actively publicized its efforts to reduce its carbon footprint. For example, it launched its Open Compute Project in April 2011, publishing designs and specifications for building highly efficient data centers so that other companies could take advantage of Facebook's efforts.

Greenpeace has also convinced Apple to use more renewable energy in its Apple’s Maiden, North Carolina data center, a move which convinced the organization to boost Apple's data center grades from F's and D's to D's and C's. And now, we can expect another go at Amazon. Or Microsoft. But probably both.